‘Senator, I’m a Christian’

Usually, the nomination of an Office of Management & Budget deputy director sails through the Senate confirmation process without much of any news being generated.

But Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., made it a headline-grabbing event—even on the eve of former FBI Director James Comey’s testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee—by grilling OMB Deputy Director-designate Russell Vought for several minutes Wednesday over a six-month-old blog post written in defense of the nominee’s alma mater. The senator’s hostility toward Vought, who is an evangelical Christian, was blatantly obvious.

Vought’s blog post, written in January for The Resurgent, included the following:

[Dr. John G. Stackhouse Jr., professor of religious studies at Crandall University in Canada] implies that someone could really “know God” without a focus on Jesus. He explains, “Having a deficient (e.g., nontrinitarian) theology of God …does not mean you are not in actual prayerful and faithful relationship with God. (Having wrong ideas about a person … doesn’t mean that you do not have a relationship with that person.)” This is the fundamental problem. Muslims do not simply have a deficient theology. They do not know God because they have rejected Jesus Christ his Son, and they stand condemned. In John 8:19, “Jesus answered, ‘You know neither me nor my Father. If you knew me, you would know my Father also.” In Luke 10:16, Jesus says, “The one who rejects me rejects him who sent me.” And in John 3:18, Jesus says, “Whoever believes in [the Son] is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.”

Sanders, however, only focused on one small piece of what is an excerpt of a commentary, and somewhat took it out of context before charging Vought was guilty of “Islamophobia.” He repeatedly interrupted Vought’s attempt to answer his questions, and finally and abruptly ended his questions by stating he would not vote for the nominee’s confirmation.

Watch the entire exchange in the video clip above. {eoa}